Site Visit – Historic Christ Church – Weems, Virginia

As much as I love museums and class assignments I didn’t drive two hours just for this assignment.  I was in the area to visit another museum for a work and the staff at Christ Church was kind enough to let us visit during their off season.    

The first Christ Church in Weems, Virginia, was a wooden structure built in the late 17th century by John Carter.  The brick, Anglican church – which stands today – was finished in 1735 using the private funds of Robert “King” Carter.  King Carter was the most powerful landowner and planter in colonial Virginia.  Today, Christ Church is one of the only 18th century structures in Virginia to retain most of its original fabric.  The structure boasts original flooring, plaster, wooden box pews, a triple-decker pulpit, brickwork and framing. 

 

Christ Church is owned and operated by the Foundation for Historic Christ Church, a 501c3 organization that was started in 1958 and has overseen the award-wining, onsite preservation work.  At Christ Church, visitors first see a small complex of administrative buildings and a small-yet-impressive museum which was renovated in 2009.  The museum contains exhibits on the church structure, the parish, the Carter family, the preservation efforts, and the Church of England.  The exhibits in the museum were designed by Riggs Ward, an award-winning design firm based out of Richmond, Virginia, that specializes in museum, visitor center and cultural institution work.   

 

Upon entering the museum, visitors see a small gift shop and information desk, staffed by volunteers.  Like most museum exhibits, visitors enter the space from the right.  There you can sit in  a replica of the high-backed wooden pews that are present in the church sanctuary to watch a short (10 minute) orientation video narrated by Roger Mudd.  The video contains the history of the Carter family in the area, the building of the church, its decline into abandonment and the preservation efforts brought on by the Foundation.  After the video, visitors enter a space dominated by classic museum exhibit work.  Original and reproduction paintings of King Carter and other family members, archeological remnants and other historic artifacts are displayed in cases and static exhibit space.  

 

A timeline of the Carter family, Christ Church, the Church of England, Virginia and its national history, Lancaster County and the restoration efforts winds throughout the entire museum space.  This eye-catching feature links events together and helps to set the church into the context of a bigger picture.   The exhibit space contains other traditional elements such as question doors that can be lifted to reveal answers.  There also are touchable elements that may be designed for children but also appeal to adults who would understand the concepts of construction.  For example, one can arrange plastic bricks into the Flemish bond pattern used to build the church.  Or, visitors can arrange similar plastic brick and stone pieces into the arches and keystones that adorn the windows of the church.  For those who are more mechanically inclined, wooden pieces (labeled with their correct structural definitions) are ready for persons to assemble into the complicated ceiling truss system that creates the vaulted ceilings inside the Church. 

 

Located in four different places within the small museum are touch screen monitors.  Each touch screen supports adjacent, traditional exhibit elements with in-depth material.  For example, one of the monitors covers the grounds around Christ Church and the grounds of the nearby home of King Carter, called Corotoman, which burned in 1725.  Users can navigate through information about the archeology conducted around both sites.  Or, a visitor may explore the natural and designed landscape of the church and home.  Other monitors go in depth regarding the Carter family, starting with John and King Carter and then moving forward through the generations of this large and long-standing Virginia family.  Another monitor covers the architecture of the church and the preservation work.  

 

The content of each touch screen video is a combination of primary source material, photographs, paintings and other historic illustrations, quotes, and open sources images and materials.  Designers made the navigation very easy.  Visitors can quickly skip from one screen to the next, allowing one to read only what interests them.  A home button also is prominently featured.  

 

The exhibits within the museum setting are very well done and appropriate for the scale of the historic site and the story the Foundation is trying to tell.  Once the visitor leaves the museum, the only interpretation of the grounds and church building are done by volunteer docents (tour guides).  Given the uniqueness of the building, it is refreshing to not be distracted by wayside signs or labels.  The building is allowed to speak for itself, and the docents expand and give life to its story.

 

Before or after one visits Historic Christ Church, much information can be gained from its Web presence.  The site, housed at www.christchurch1735.org, is well designed and contains an amazing amount of information for a small historic venue run by a non-profit.  Those doing research on the Carter family, colonial churches and 18th century architecture will find a great deal.  Navigation is well designed, with easy returns to the home page and an absence of frustrating loops or dead ends.  Home page tabs lead to topics including: history, architecture, preservation, archeology, events, volunteer, kids pages, among others.

 

The page dedicated to school field trips will be useful to teachers.  School-related programs are listed, with links to more in-depth information, to include covered SOLs.  Programs are further identified with appropriate grade levels and presentation time periods.  The only things missing are pre-visit lessons, worksheets and other materials.  Perhaps those are emailed at the time of reservation to avoid material poaching by others?  

 

All of the links are live with the exception of the link to Foundation newsletters.  The architecture page is fairly deep.  A click on the pulpit information page then links deeper to information on the clerk’s desk and the reading desk.  If you click on the clerk’s desk, you can link to the reading desk.  From either page it is easy to go back to main architecture page or home.  

 

For its strengths, there is room for improvement.  

• The font for the navigation buttons on the left is small and hard to read.  Those buttons also could be bigger.  
• The use of Lucida Calligraphy for the tagline of the organization across the top is cliché.  Christ Church is a historic site, so the website designer must have assumed they should use a font that more strongly suggests 18th century typography.  
• There is a large amount of un-used space under the left navigation bar and the picture of the church.  Why not fill that space with something useful or engaging?  
• There is no contact information for the website’s content manager.
• While users are able to navigate back to the home page fairly easily, there is a lack of navigational consistency within the pages.  
• From the archives page I would have expected to have found a link to images or research and documentation.  Instead you are taken to a question and answer “game.”  The questions are based on primary source material which is pictured on the page but not large enough for close study.  It’s an interesting concept, that is poorly executed and located.
• Links to PDF’s do not contain labels identifying them as PDFs.  One such PDF link is their complete dendrochronology report.  A wonderful resource for historic preservation professionals, students and interested parties.  For the casual visitor there is no explanation of what this report is.  Not to mention its lengthly download time for slow connections.  
• The site appears to be optimized for viewing on tablets.  There is however no mobile site for easier viewing on smart phones.   
• There is no virtual tour of the church,  something that would be nice but also understandable for why it isn’t there.  Small museums live off the onsite visitors who pay an admission fee, leave a donation and spend money in a gift shop.  The photographs on the site are not done displayed using Flash technology – although I don’t think that detracts from the website.  There is no audio component either.  In the case of Christ Church I don’t know that its necessary or would enhance the visitor’s experience.  

 

The Christ Church museum exhibit is top notch for a smaller organization.  By many measures, it rivals much larger institutions.  The church itself is an impressive building and stands out on its own.  The website is impressive, given that many small, non-profit museums often have a very rudimentary or static digital presence.  The Foundation for Historic Christ Church has done a comprehensive and compelling job of presenting the history of the structure and its congregation, the Carter family and the area of Lancaster County.  

** I would recommend going during the warm weather months.  The church has no heat or AC.  There was a few inches of snow on the ground on the day of our visit and we were frozen by the time we left.